Ncaa's Changes - Are They Cure Or Just Snake Oil?

The colleges: Taking the cure

October 30, 1991|By Alan Schmadtke of The Sentinel Staff

TALLAHASSEE — At first glance, the NCAA seems to have miraculously cured itself.

Pressured into action, college athletics' major governing body created a pill for its pocked image of rules enforcement, called a press conference Monday and then swallowed its medicine before one and all.

Now it waits to look better.

Or to see if anything changes at all.

A panel specially picked by NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz delivered 11 proposals designed to improve both the NCAA's policing methods and its perception as a big, bad bully.

''This is a magnificent day for those who want and expect fairness within the most powerful athletic body in the world,'' said Nevada-Las Vegas coach Jerry Tarkanian, perhaps the most embattled critic the NCAA has known.

''Certainly the committee has taken the strongest steps ever to bring the NCAA into more fairness.''

''I'm appreciative of the efforts that the committee made and, frankly, am surprised at the substance,'' said Rep. Jim King, R-Jacksonville. ''But, also, I'd reserve judgment before I'd say, 'Yeah, I think we can live with that.' ''

On the cutting edge of a national trend, King defied the NCAA this year and helped push a due-process bill through the Florida Legislature.

The bill, scheduled to take effect in July, is one of four passed by states across the country. Despite small differences, all hold the NCAA to due-process methods when it investigates athletes, coaches and athletic officials.

Support for laws at the federal level also has picked up, and the political climate more or less pushed the NCAA into self-examination.

''I would hope that they (lawmakers) would look at this as a genuine effort and not a window dressing,'' Schultz said.

Although the NCAA gave the panel no power, it is expected to heed the advice.

Schultz said he believes the NCAA Council, a 44-member ruling board, will approve nine of the proposals in early January, and those could be put into effect immediately.

Debate on the other two - calling for an open-hearings process and an independent hearings officer to settle clear disagreements - will rage for a while.

''Things get ugly (during an investigation),'' said Norm Sloan, who resigned in 1989 as basketball coach at the University of Florida during an NCAA investigation. ''They've gotten ugly in the past under the current system. . . . Some things you can't change. I'm elated at what they've done.''

Said Michael Glazier, an attorney who investigated UF for the NCAA: ''They're eliminating the incentive for schools to cooperate and make it a non-adversarial relationship. Witnesses are going to be less likely (to come forward).''

''For a period of time, everybody's really for tough enforcement. Then when it gets to be too tough for some people, it goes back the other way. The '90s are going to be a lot different than the '80s were.''

Unless repealed during a legislative session that begins Jan. 4, Florida's law means coaches accused of violations can have access to evidence the NCAA has gathered, and they can defend themselves in a hearing open to the public.

For punishment, it holds the NCAA liable for damages should it unfairly prosecute a school.

Perhaps because of those bills and many like them on the table in other states, the NCAA's special committee gave similar suggestions.

It asked investigators to tape its interviews, make transcripts available to accused coaches and to hire an independent arbitrator to decide disputes during hearings. It asked for quicker, fairer results.

''I think it's safe to say the NCAA has made a significant step to where Florida's law is,'' King said. ''How far away they are, we'll have to determine.''

The panel, chaired by Brigham Young University President Rex Lee, tried to create a shorter path to settlement.

Instead of every case going to the Committee on Infractions, something that took 18 painful months in UF's case, it proposed schools and the NCAA - with the help of an impartial hearings officer (say, a retired judge) - try to agree on a case's facts and upon its penalties.

Lee said in about 50 percent of the NCAA's cases, both sides agree on facts.

In Florida's case, the Gators would have had more input into last year's penalty, a football bowl sanction.

''It would save a ton of money,'' said UF President John Lombardi, whose school spent nearly $500,000 during the messy investigation of its football and basketball programs.

''A lot of that (expense) was the result of activity that took place after everybody agreed on what happened. In this kind of quick closure the infractions people say, 'We think X and Y, the university thinks Y and Z, but we won't argue about Z if you don't argue about X. We'll settle on so many scholarships lost . . .' and whatever. I think that makes good sense.''

So does the NCAA, if for a different reason.

At Monday's announcement, Lee said he thought the recommendations fulfilled court-tested requirements for due process, eliminating any possible lawsuits on that ground.

''Over and over, what we heard from people was, 'We want to play by the rules, but we also want to be confident that if we do so, we don't want to be put at a competitive disadvantage,' '' he said. ''I don't think we've done that.''

The question, one to be answered slowly over the next year, is what exactly the NCAA has done.